


Bad Decisions

by Identiaetslos



Category: Anthem (Video Game)
Genre: Also Sexy Bad Choices, Battle Couple, F/F, Fingering, Fluff, Javelin Flirting, Kissing, Major Anthem Spoilers, Romance, Sexy Good Choices, Sexy Times, Trapped in the jungle with only one Javelin, With Some Sexy Danger, lesbianing, light restraining
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-17
Updated: 2019-02-17
Packaged: 2019-10-30 01:44:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17819468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Identiaetslos/pseuds/Identiaetslos
Summary: ***MAJOR ANTHEM PLOT SPOILERS*****Crackly Golden Age of Radio Melodramatic Theme*Love among the chaos. Bad times leads to good times for Freelancers Ishana Helio and Rythe.*Miranda Raison voice* It's terrible! And magnificent!





	Bad Decisions

Ishana Helio didn’t mind night flights. Up here, it was easy to get lost gazing at the stars, daydreaming about a life that wasn’t so filled with fighting Scars and Dominion, uncovering Shaper relics.

In fact night flights were one of the few things that inspired relaxation these days. Nothing but herself, the night sky, and the forest below...well, and her Cypher. It was good to have Faye back in the chair. She was skilled and adapted well to Ishana’s way of doing things, no matter how unorthodox. Though, Faye’s forward-thinking and nurturing nature had a way of coaxing Ishana to do the things that were needed, and a few things that Faye wanted without her being overly pushy.

It was different. A good kind of different, but Ishana couldn’t help but feel Owen’s absence. He’d been good, they worked well together. The knot of betrayal sat like a lump in her chest. Who had really betrayed who? She mused, and rolled her Ranger Javelin named 'Helio,' gently port side to stay in a straight vector to her objective. Had she been too hard on him? She remembered being young and chomping at the bit for a chance to be up here. He hadn’t been a bad fighter, she had merely cared too much.

That was twice now she’d failed by caring too much. The pit grew.

Suddenly, Helio sputtered and dropped.

“Shit!” Ishana swore as the ground rushed at her and reignited her afterburners just as she brushed the spray of one of the smaller waterfalls coming off the mountain that Fort Tarsis rested on.

"Steady. Don’t get too lost up there.” Faye was making fun of her, but as always, her voice was like that helping hand at the edge of the deep end of a swimming pool.

Ishana could only laugh. “Maybe next time, I’ll bring a few episodes of Crimson Lancer.”

“Really? I never would have taken you to be into that sort of rubbish.” Faye was making fun again.

“Something to listen to.” Ishana couldn’t help a blush.

“Uh huh. You’ve been hanging out with Brin too much.”

"No such thing. She’s the one who introduced me, but not the one who got me to listen to more than one episode,” Ishana replied, brushing through another waterfall to cool her afterburners a little more.

“Oh?”

“Rythe is a fan, apparently. Last card game, she made me listen to some while we played.”

“Did you win?”

“No. Got my ass handed to me, but she’s a good player, and I was too busy laughing at the show to notice.”

“Uh huh. Psyched you out.”

“Yeah, she did. Can’t say I’m complaining. She didn’t get much, and it was more of me being mildly interested in getting to know the people around me,” Ishana replied, hoping Faye would bite on her attempt to downplay her intentions.

Ishana smiled through her memories of Freelancer Rythe and those dashing eyes just above her cards, playing with her tongue almost as much as she did the game while the radio show played on in the background. Sad that she wasn’t around as much what with her paying her debt to the Regulators. The price of Sexy Bad Choices.

And they were sexy. And so was she.

Dodging a rock edifice, Ishana reminded herself to stay focused on flying and on the upcoming objective. A clear night meant that more animals would be out, and some of them wouldn’t be happy to be disturbed. It also meant the increased likelihood of outlaws and scavengers.

Even at this altitude, a daydreaming Freelancer would be prime fodder for well-placed small arms fire.

“My readings here indicate you’re a little more than passively interested, but we’ll talk about that later. Time to get to work. You should be coming up on the agent’s last known location.”

Just as Faye finished talking, Ishana’s HUD flashed the map some distance off in the middle of the jungle. Ishana dipped underneath the canopy, eyes darting across her HUD as she expertly navigated Helio through the dense thicket.

One of Tassyn’s agents had gone missing. That was three in as many days. Intelligence placed the agent close to the Fortress of Dawn. What they were doing all the way out here, of course, Tassyn was her usual tight-lipped self over. Worry hung in the back of Ishana’s mind, but after the last several months working directly for Tassyn, she had become accustomed to that feeling.

Ishana gently set Helio down a few yards from the spot that Corvis provided. Just in case.

Looking down the scope of her long range rifle, Ishana couldn’t make out any movement, no fires. A good sign on the surface, but Ishana couldn’t help but think that the forest was way too quiet.

Faye called out a transponder signal from the agent that was in a clearing atop a hill close to the fortress itself. There was no sign of the agent, and as Faye acquired a trail to follow, the ground opened up.

“Skorpions!” Ishana and Faye shouted simultaneously as they crawled out from everywhere.

Night time was when the skorpions worked best: They moved swiftly and used their natural camouflage to their advantage. It was everything Ishana could do to stay in the fight and keep moving. After a flurry of frantic fighting, Ishana managed to clear a large enough path to get to where Faye had directed her next.

“Nicely done,” Faye complimented.

“I’m getting the hang of it,” Ishana quipped and was rewarded with a snort.

“The trail leads into that thicket of forest to the Northwest,” Faye directed and lit up Ishana’s HUD for her.

“Dark, secluded place. My favorite.”

“I’ll have to remember that for the next time I talk to Rythe.”

Ishana’s cheeks instantly flushed. “That was below the belt.”

“I know. That’s the idea,” Faye quipped.

Ishana rolled her eyes and let it go as she made her way into the thicket of underbrush. Her scanner brought her to the exact place where the agent’s body lay. He was half-clothed, flesh eaten away as though he had been just the thing for dinner.

And in fact, he was...Ishana gasped as she lifted her eyes, and shone the lamp of her rifle directly at the exact thing that she had been fearing: Eggs. Everywhere, skorpion eggs.

“Uh Faye?” Ishana asked.

“I see it--”

Whatever Faye was going to tell her next was drowned out by a violent shake of the ground and the popping sound of the eggs as skorpions skittered from them, and came up from the soil itself.

The noise that Ishana made wasn’t human and she lit her afterburner to get away quickly. However, it was too late. Acidic skorpion goo immediately knocked her out of the air and her Ranger squealed the song of its people as it warned her that the acid was eating it and that the engines weren’t functional.

“I should have known better!” Ishana cried as she fought through a dizzying confusion of bullets, muck, and tentacles. Her Ranger cried in as much of a panic as Ishana was in. There were too many of them.

Ishana’s HUD lit up in red indicators, and Helio shrieked in agony, her armor nearly gone. This was how it ended. Not in the Heart of Rage. Not in avenging Owen’s betrayal, but in some dark forest amongst hungry skorpions. “What a way to go,” Ishana muttered.

“If by ‘Go’ you mean, ‘go ballistic’ then hell yeah!” Thundering down from above was Rythe, and hit the ground just before Ishana with a hard melee strike which ended several skorpions moving in for the kill.

“Watch this!” Rythe said triumphantly and brought her Javelin into a hover and opened up, raining fire and terror on the rest of the lot.

Ishana quickly infused her suit with fresh energy and joined Rythe side-by-side as they tangled with the nasty bugs. Rythe was better than anyone that Ishana had fought alongside with, but she took a lot of chances, leaving her Javelin open for easy strikes: Sexy Danger, is what Rythe would refer to it as, and Ishana smiled at herself as she easily compensated for Rythe with her preferred run-and-gun style of fighting.

It was easy to fall into a rhythm. Rythe would shoot there, Ishana would throw a grenade here, dancing around the battlefield as though this wasn’t the first time the two of them ever shared it.

“That’s it! Left hand/right hand!” Rythe shouted to Ishana, her voice nearly a laugh.

Regardless of Ishana’s criticisms, Rythe was a surgeon with her snake-patterned Javelin , slicing through her enemies like with a ruthlessness that made it easy to forget that underneath the suit, was the craziest, gentlest soul that Ishana had recalled meeting.

And easily her favorite person in Fort Tarsis.

Before Ishana knew it, the fight was over, and surrounding them was smoldering jungle and the quiet of night.

“That was lucky,” Faye said.

Ishana only half heard Faye and let herself breathe a moment, taking in her surroundings. And Rythe in her javelin, strolling among the carnage. It had been lucky. Rythe was the exact person she wanted to see.

“I think I’m going to leave you two.” Faye said gently and the inside of Ishana’s Javelin was quiet again.

“How did you know I was down here?” Ishana asked.

“I didn’t. Sometimes, I come out here to enjoy the night,” Rythe said, glancing at Ishana as she knelt down before the subject of the night’s adventure: Tassyn’s agent. “I overheard you needed some help, so I came. Can’t have you hogging all the fun. What a way to go,” she said of the body.

“You’re telling me,” Ishana replied. “I don’t think Corvis wants that back.”

“Not unless you’re planning on making a statement. Which would be a bad decision. Maybe sexy, but definitely bad. They may want his notebook, though.” Rythe tossed it to Ishana.

”Thanks,

Ishana replied.

Even though Rythe’s face was obscured behind the helmet of her Javelin, she could almost see that heart-stoppingly cute smile on her face. If she hadn’t been wearing her own Javelin, Ishana was tempted to grab Rythe here and kiss her.

Rythe lingered for a moment and softened her posture as if she were thinking something similar.

Instead, Ishana returned to the task at hand and shoved that thought aside for later. “You’re right, but I think he deserves something better than to be left out here for more skorpions, don’t you think?”

“Sentimental.” Rythe looked as though she wanted to say something more, but swallowed her statement to help Ishana.

Together, they went, with Ishana carrying the man in her arms, to an outcropping overlooking the fortress. In the daylight, it was a brilliant sight. With the sky dark, it was haunting, and it was as though Ishana could hear the whispers of the fallen carried on the wind.

Rythe was quiet and looked contemplative and helped Ishana dig the man a proper grave.

“Do you want to say anything?” Ishana asked of Rythe.

Rythe turned her head down to the shoddy headstone that the two of them had come up with. It was blank since neither of them knew the man’s name, but Rythe had come up with something nice to say. She shook her head. “Only spirits I believe in are the ones that make you forget your name after enough of em.”

Ishana snorted. “Fair enough.”

For a long moment, the two of them stared out into the darkened ravine. As if there was anything to see. It was more of an excuse to have a moment with each other. "Prettier during the night," Rythe said.

Ishana looked just above the ridge atop the mountain, into the stars once more. She thought again of what it would be like just to come out here without having to dodge something trying to eat her. "I never come out this far," Ishana admitted.

"Maybe we can do it together sometime," Rythe said. "Power of two." There was a laugh behind her voice, but her gaze lingered on Ishana.

There was more to that statement and Ishana's cheeks warmed at the invitation. "You and me out here? I don't know if Bastion is ready for that." 

Rythe laughed. "Well, they can just get used to it."

There was more to that statement, too, and Ishana leaned closer into Rythe and touched her Javelin hand to hers. "Fly back with me?"

Rythe fidgeted nervously. "How about I meet you at lancer headquarters in a bit?"

Ishana nodded in disappointment. "Be careful. Don't stay out here too long."

\-----------

Rythe had elected to stay out longer, leaving Ishana to fly back to Fort Tarsis with nothing but the thoughts in her head. Most of them were about Rythe, replaying how she looked in her Javelin, the fluid way she moved. Those bedroom eyes, peeking through her helmet, flashing the way they did at the card table when she had her victim. It made Ishana roll her hips to think about.

"I'm hopeless." Ishana said mostly to herself, but she knew Faye was listening. It was a Javelin like any other Javelin, but it wasn’t just any other Javelin. It had been hers, and Rythe had looked good in it.

“Why listen to the Crimson Lancer when I can just listen to you?” Faye joked.

“Funny,” Ishana replied. She was sure Faye could see the blush on her face and she pushed back the urge to go find Rythe for more adventure. Ishana’s suit was in dire need of repair, and her body was in dire need to be someplace that wasn’t in combat. Or being distracted.

Other than the scorch marks, dents, pock marks, acid burns, and pulled out stitching along her chest plate, her Ranger was in fairly good condition. Even if Zoe would likely have words in the morning.

Ishana made a mental note to leave something extra for her once money came in from her last three contracts, and pulled herself from Helio. Exhaustion was setting in fast, and Ishana already ached in places that she knew would be ten times worse tomorrow. It was a good kind of ache; one that reminded her of being alive.

Ishana made her way toward her residence, and nearly tripped over a large vine-like data cable in the middle of the street. She thought of Rythe somewhere out in the jungle, and then of her earlier thoughts of Owen. Because of her, Rythe was out there performing odd jobs for someone she knew, in the back of her mind, was dangerous; putting her in danger. For as much as Rythe called it Sexy Danger, Ishana couldn’t help but worry. Did Rythe really like night flights, or was she feeding a line to tell Ishana (and herself) that there was a reason to be out there other than obligation?

Letting out a puff of air, Ishana stopped and turned back to her Javelin to go back out and find Rythe.

“Hey!”

Ishana stopped. It was Rythe again, and she turned to face her. “I thought you were--” Ishana frowned, puzzled.

“I was,” Rythe said. “Can’t be a big hero like you if I’m falling asleep in my Javelin.” She grinned, that smile of hers lighting up her face and Ishana’s heart. “Care for a drink?” She fidgeted and thumbed at the bar.

“That isn’t sleeping,” Ishana pointed out. Spending another moment with Rythe seemed better than going home alone. “But I’ll bite,” she added.

Rythe grinned and backed away farther into the fort. "Good. I was hoping you'd say yes." 

"To be honest, I've been looking forward to more of you." The flirt was honest and it brought a rush of embarrassment that caused Ishana to seriously consider running. Since when did she run from anything?

"That's what all the girls say," Rythe flirted back. She paused and skewed her lips. “That was good earlier,” Rythe said as the two of them closed in on the tavern.

“It was. We should do it more,” Ishana replied, glancing at her. Lights from the doorways around the living spaces of Fort Tarsis cast a romantic glow about Rythe’s dark skin and soft features. Rythe was pretty, and she knew just how to use all of her charms to get Ishana to forget what she was serious about a minute ago. That was the idea wasn’t it?

It had been a fast friendship, if one could call it that. They got along, but interactions were always on the edge of flirting. Like now. The fact that Rythe glanced her way more than occasionally wasn’t going unnoticed. Ishana did her best to encourage Rythe with a suggestive smile.

“The two of us: Sexy Danger Left and Sexy Danger right!” Rythe said, deftly hopping over the same cord that gave Ishana trouble earlier.

Ishana laughed. “That’s it! Stronger together.” Her words lingered in the air and were far more cryptic than she intended.

Rythe slowed her paces and the color around her cheeks reddened. “Stronger together,” she repeated and glanced at Ishana. The cadence of Rythe’s smile changed and there was a warm curiosity behind her eyes that made Ishana stop just before the curtain hanging over the bar entrance. 

The subject of romance had been the farthest thing from Ishana’s mind since becoming a Freelancer. Out there, in the wilderness, with the days ahead only questions, becoming attached to another person seemed like that dumbest thing that she could do. She hadn’t asked other Freelancers about their personal lives, nor did they seem interested in hers. Camaraderie was professional and that was all, and with everything she knew, starting something with someone was doomed from the beginning. Especially if it was with another Freelancer, and especially one like Rythe, who was far more cavalier than the average lancer. That was what made her irresistible, however.

What was the expectation in this role? To live a distant life? Lancers came from different walks of life, all shapes and sizes, and experiences molded the Lancer into something different. When did the job separate from the Lancer? Did it? It was easy to lose one’s humanity while taking on this role; to forget that someone like Rythe came from somewhere. She spoke of a mother, Ishana had one of her own in a past that seemed far too distant the longer the days grew.

Looking into Rythe’s eyes, she saw someone who understood all of this; read her like a book.

“Our sexy bad choice, in there, awaits,” Rythe said. Her voice had a slight wobble of nervousness to it.

Ishana nodded.

Rythe moved, but not toward the bar, toward her. She was close enough that Ishana could smell the faint scent of the fabric that made up the inside of her Javelin, her clothes, perspiration. Ishana admired the smartness of her brow, fullness of her cheeks, the way her ears poked out a little, and the depths of her hazel eyes.

Gently, Rythe reached out with a hand and touched Ishana lightly on her arm. Her fingers pressed right where a bruise was forming and Ishana couldn’t help a wince.

“I suppose I shouldn't do that,” Rythe said, and moved her hand.

It wasn’t a bad sort of pain and Ishana shook her head with a grin as her thighs warmed. Ishana moved Rythe's hand back to where it was and reveled in the softness of her hand. "I like it," she admitted.

Rythe let her hand linger. A small smile played at the corners of Rythe’s lips and she laughed softly while she took one of Ishana's hands and placed it on her hip. She was softer than Ishana imagined and her eyes fluttered delightfully in a wince of her own. "You're not the only one. Feels like living doesn't it?" Rythe grinned. She gasped when Ishana pressed harder and her eyes darted to Ishana’s lips. Not to question, to dare. Like she always dared. This was really happening. No more furtive glances from across the card table, no flirtatious smiles and jokes while passing each other in the halls. Rythe was here, in her arms.

Ishana's heart pounded nervously and she glanced at Rythe's pouty lower lip which begged for closer attention. “I think...I’d like to make a different, sexy bad choice,” she whispered and kissed Rythe.

It had been a long time since Ishana last kissed a woman. Too long. And she’d never been kissed like this: Consumed, but not slobbered on; desired but not overpowered. Rythe’s hands wrapped around Ishana’s neck and she threaded her fingers through Ishana’s short, blonde hair, accepting her, wanting her. Her mouth and tongue wrapped around hers, moving like she did on the battlefield, purposeful, unrestrained, daring.

Ever since the Heart of Rage, Ishana's focus had been on total control. Never would she allow herself to fall under the mercy of someone else. Except, in this moment Rythe could have anything she wanted. It felt so good to let go, to let another person take control for once. Ishana relaxed and let Rythe know her. She let out a small noise.

Rythe giggled and broke from the kiss. She licked her lips with lecherous contemplation and glanced at the bar door, and then at passersby who had paused to take in the juicy gossip. And there would be some. At the moment, Ishana cared more about Rythe, eyes dancing across her body as though she were undressing her here and now. "I can think of an even worse decision." Rythe's voice was like honey dripping into her mind.

Ishana's mind swirled with ideas of where this was headed, and how the rest of Rythe would feel. She smiled drunkenly. “My place or yours?”


End file.
